Dark Horse (27 page)

Cursing, he shifted position once more, but the rough bark still dug into his back. Bloody land, that's the trouble. Ain't right for a Danubian boatman to be stuck ashore and no ship to go back to. He wriggled again, and decided to put up with the discomfort. What the hell. The rewards were well worth a sore bum, and it weren't for long, after all. Besides. He was that bloody weary. Limbs like sodding anchor stones. Eyelids heavier than the lead markers on the depth lines, making things hard to focus. All the same. Geta sniffed. He'd rather have a ship's wale at his back any day! Planks under his feet, something solid, something reliable, something you know how'll
behave.
Aye, and he ought to have the sky over his head, too. A bloke can't see buggery under this canopy. Stars. That's what a bloke needs to see. Stars to steer by, stars to look up at like the old friends they are, bright shining comforting stars. Not sodding pine cones. This canopy turned the world darker than stormclouds.

Storms. Aye. He'd known storms in the Aegean that had lasted a week and he'd never felt this bloody tired. But it weren't about lack of sleep, were it? Thing is, it just weren't proper, a helmsman having to drive his own ship on to the rocks. Fully manned, too. A fly settled on his cheek and Geta wanted to wipe it away, but his hand was too heavy. The fly flew off anyway. Terrible. Terrible it were, hearing the

anguish of men he'd shared suppers and whores with, seeing their blood turn the sea water red. Living through that's bound to catch up with a fellow, and though he'd seen shock affect men in lots of different ways, Geta knew there weren't nowt a good kip couldn't put right.

'Huh?' He forced his drowsy eyes open. 'Oh, it's you, lad.'

'Who were you expecting?' Jason said, settling his tall frame beside him against the pine.

'Did yer get him?'

'Damn right I did.'

'What about them other two ships? They carry ballistas, as well.'

'Them, too,' Jason said. 'First shot every time.'

'Not bad for an Eastern boy, I suppose,' Geta said.

'Reassuring, is it, that I've not lost my touch?' Jason flashed a sideways glance at his friend. 'Rather like someone else I might mention, not a million miles from where I'm sitting. That was fine work back there, Geta.'

'All in a good cause, you crafty bugger.' He were too weary to laugh, and it ended up as a wheeze. 'You're sure Azan don't know?'

'Positive.'

Geta leered. 'Tell me again how much is hidden in that cave over the ridge?'

'More than you can carry, that's for sure, you greedy bastard.'

'All gold?'

'Every last item. Coins, statues, bracelets, pendants—'

'Crowns?' he chuckled. 'I've always fancied a crown, see. Kinda goes with me red hair, don't yer think?'

'Better than a tiara, certainly.' Jason whistled softly under his breath as he adjusted the tension on his bow string, polished the wood with his shirt, ditto the blade on his short sword. It was a tune Geta remembered from way back in his childhood. A Scythian love song about star-crossed young lovers, sung in every house and every felt yurt, over every campfire and in every riverboat from the Caucasus to the Danube and north, over the plains.

'That's all I need, a bloody lullaby,' he muttered.

'So sleep,' Jason said.

'You reckon it's safe?'

'The rest will do you good, you ugly lug. You look knackered.'

'I am knackered.' Geta winced as the bark caught his backbone again. 'Half an hour, then, but no more. Kick me, hard as a mule if you must, but we can't afford to hang about, lad. Not now it's starting to get dark. If Azan sniffs booty up here, he'll be after us faster than a bullet from your bloody slingshot.'

'Azan knows nothing about our private pension fund,' Jason assured him. 'And here's something to cheer you up. He's that pissed off at having all three artillery masters out of action, he's given up. So you rest easy and I'll wake you when it's time to leave.'

'Mind you do, son, because if it gets much darker, we won't be able to see our way up this bloody mountain.' But already his limbs were slack, his head starting to loll.

'Your problem is, you worry too much,' Jason told him with a laugh, patting the solid block that was the helmsman's shoulder.

'Aye, well that's the trouble,' Geta chuckled, his voice slurring as he abandoned himself to the gentle current of sleep, 'when a helmsman has to wreck his own ship, you lousy bastard!'

'By Acca! For a Danube man you don't half nag.' Jason laughed. 'But if it makes you sleep easier, then I promise I won't make you crash any more ships. At least, not this week.' But he was wasting his breath. The current of sleep had already swept Geta up and carried him with it.

'What was that about?' Claudia asked as Jason sauntered across to her. She didn't much trust the chummy way those two had sat conferring and although she'd noticed no sudden change in the pirate captain, it occurred to her that there might not actually
be
any external indicator. In fact, his very charm may well have misled Bulis into trusting him. The same sense of reasonableness that had proved so fatal for Leo and, no

doubt, countless others. Claudia Seferius would not make the mistake of trusting him, that's for sure!

'I was putting Geta's mind at rest about the stash of treasure over the ridge,' Jason said, stropping his dagger gently back and forth on a stone. 'Although I may have been a tad economical with the truth in implying that Azan had given up his desire for pursuit.'

Claudia squinted through the branches to what looked suspiciously like a war party making preparations to manoeuvre their rowing boat to the nearest accessible landing point.

'Croesus, Jason, what the hell did you do to piss Azan off so badly?'

Jason tossed her his bow. 'What do you think?' he said, passing his quiver over as well. 'I double-crossed him, of course.'

'About the treasure stashed over this hill?'

'You want the full list? Or would you prefer to get going before they catch up with us? Here.' When the strap of his battle axe landed on her shoulder, her knees nearly buckled with the weight. 'Oh, and you'll have to carry this, too.'

'I am not touching that sack.'

'Yes, you are.'

Scalp hunter or no scalp hunter, there are times when a girl simply has to make a stand. 'Excuse me, but I'm standing here like Diana of the Forests, bow in one hand, quiver on my back and bent double with a bloody battleaxe while you ponce about carrying diddly squat. Why don't
you
carry the damned sack?'

'Because,' he said patiently, 'I shall be carrying Geta. In case you hadn't noticed, he died while I was sitting with him.'

'What?' The great flat-faced, slant-eyed ox was dead? 'How?'

Claudia felt herself swaying. Had he slit Geta's throat back there when she wasn't looking? One more double-cross in a lifetime of double-crosses would hardly notice.

'From the bolt he took saving your life,' Jason said, sheathing his dagger. 'So kindly pick up the sack and get your arse up that hill before I lose my bloody temper.'

The demon hugged its secret pleasure to its breast. To have a person at one's mercy, to manipulate their fears and terrors and stretch and play with their emotions, was the most powerful feeling on earth.

And now the demon had made another startling discovery. Contrary to all its expectations, men were nowhere near as satisfying as women when it came to the indulgence of torment. Not even close! Too solid and one-dimensional in their thoughts. No imagination to play on. Masculine suggestibility did not have one tenth of the fertile soil that the female mind enjoyed.

The demon turned farmer.

Sowing seeds of terror, watching them sprout and take root in the soul it had chosen. And, like any good landsman, it nurtured its crop, feeding its victim's destruction a bit at a time, just enough to make the crop grow, but not so much that it would bolt.

Because the best time to reap is when the crop is young and at its most tender . . .

The demon was content to wait.

Time was on its side.

Always had been. Always will.

Sitting beside the fresh-water pond, Clio should have felt elated. She'd beaten off the lynch mob. She was alive, free, the islanders wouldn't touch her now. So why did her legs feel as though they'd been filleted? Why could she not stop shaking?
Why did she not feel triumphant?

Dragonflies darted back and forth, iridescent rainbows of blue, green and silver in the torrid midday heat. A desultory songbird warbled in the scrub, a goat bleated and the shepherd boy's flute carried from way over the hill on the still island air. But the reflection in the mirror of the pool quaked.

Her ordeal had been abominable, that was true. No human being should be put through that, but she had won, hadn't she? And it wasn't as though she didn't empathize with native superstition. She was Liburnian herself. She understood the minds of the people who made up Illyria - Istrians, Dalmatians, Liburnians, as well as all the islanders - and who so lacked the sense of adventure prevalent among the Greeks and the Romans. To the peaceful and by and large placid Illyrians, travel was anathema, but what they lacked in derring-do they compensated for in other ways. Clio's own people, for instance, had developed into superlative shipbuilders, creating light fast galleys especially suited to these waters, the same type Jason used and which were even called liburnians. The Istrians had honed their hunting skills to procure game from deep in the forests, the Dalmatians had evolved into skilled engravers, exporting their crafts round the Adriatic as far as the Bosphorus, and the islanders rejoiced in their musical skills. But because they rarely travelled beyond their own narrow, self-imposed confines, superstition had become magnified and on Cressia, thanks to the island's

dark history, it had a tendency to spiral out of recognition when times were hard, as they were now.

Which was not to excuse lynch-mob mentality. Merely to try and understand where the bastards were coming from.
And use their own superstitions against them.

With her flawless complexion, proud carriage, magnificent bosom and cape of gleaming black hair, the islanders had mistrusted her from the beginning. For a woman whose childbearing years were almost past to isolate herself from the community seemed unnatural, allowing fertile imaginations to run riot.

A boy runs away from home, as boys do, but they see only the stranger restoring her youth by feasting off his living flesh. The conclusion was hasty, they realized that. Perhaps the boy came home, wrote a letter, who knows? For whatever reason, the
Lamiae
theory quickly died down, but the seeds of sorcery had been sown. Instead of examining their own consciences at how the debilitating illness which claimed the fisherman's wife and the carpenter's son had slipped past their notice, they demanded a scapegoat.

Vampire was the word bruited, but the islanders hadn't actually believed it. Sure, they'd tossed down the odd branch of whitethorn, left piglet intestines, chanted obscenities - but at heart they believed Clio to be human. A witch, who conjured up wickedness.

But suppose Clio really was one of the
Striges,
one of those bloodthirsty birds of the night?

Once she had seen the flip side of the coin, power was hers. She'd spat on a red gown and rubbed the dye round her mouth, trailing lines down her chin as though blood had been dripping. She clawed at her hair, making it wild, covered her face with flour to make it white, stripped herself naked apart from a bright yellow cloak. She had no idea whether the
Striges
were supposed to be winged or otherwise, much less what colour those wings might be, but she'd bet her bottom denarius those murderous bastards outside wouldn't know either!

With her ear to the door, she had waited until footsteps shuffled towards her cottage. Silently lifted the latch. Then, to their total surprise, flung herself into the night.

'Aieeee!'

Screaming at the top of her lungs, she'd lunged headlong into the clearing, yellow wings billowing, the colour of the sulphur of Hades.

'Come to me, my family of gnomes, vampires and witches!'

Thopc, lugats
and
shtrigas.
She enunciated the words clearly. It was vital the islanders heard this woman, who they'd believed Roman, speaking their own language fluently.

'Come, wolfman! Come, ye children of the night! Let us dine.'

She began to dance around the rotting intestines, screeching and howling at the top of her voice, calling upon other shapeshifters in her native Liburnian tongue. It was now or never, she calculated. Either they'd rush her, because she was mad or else they'd run screaming down the hillside like the cowards they truly were. Clio was taking no chances. She fell upon one of the stinking piles and pretended to devour it.

'Look, ye harpies and trolls. Someone has spread us a banquet. We will not need to search for food elsewhere tonight!'

She stood up and began to dance again.

'Come to me, my dark friends. Feast upon the blood of the sacrifice, more succulent than a child's I assure you, and let us gain strength.' She made loud smacking noises with her mouth. 'Gather, all you flesh-eating
thropc.
Join me in my banquet, my immortal sisters the
shtrigas
—'